"They just didn't give me any support whatsoever," she added. "Rather than helping with my decision to have a kit done, which in itself is a difficult thing to do immediately following a very traumatic incident, they told me I could come into UHS and talk to someone," the woman wrote.

"I don't know if they were expressing doubt about whether I needed to go to the hospital, but the real problem for me was the lack of support for a decision I had already made," she wrote.

Trying to Recover

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But even after the initial contact with medical and support services, both women say they were in need of long-term treatment the College could not offer. While both praise Gould, who specifically deals with rape victims, they could not count on one UHS official to help them recover.

"I was contacted by members of the administration, but nothing was followed through on," the woman raped by Elster told Perspective, the campus liberal magazine, last month. "I think that they were working under the assumption that if I wanted help I would come to them. That's a fallacious assumption because I had Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome because of what I was going through and I was expected to be able to arrange meetings with these people."

As a result, she says she had to go off campus for most of her counseling.

Assistant Dean of the College Karen E. Avery '87, who is also dean of co-education and one of the first administrators sexual assault victims may deal with, told The Crimson last month that she takes a hands-off approach, waiting, after the initial contact, for students to seek her out.

"I try not to be intrusive because I want students to make their own decisions," Avery said. "I usually follow up after a while and say, 'Let me know how you're doing.' I'll send an e-mail...letting them take the first steps."